“There are two fundamental ways to approach time: Either it’s something outside of you that you cannot control, or it’s something within you that you fully control.” – Be Your Future Self Now, Dr. Benjamin Hardy
We all have the same 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yet some of us manage to do a lot more with those hours than others. William Penn (1644-1718, founder of Pennsylvania) put it well: “Time is what we want most and use worst.” You will never ‘find’ enough time to do all you want to accomplish, instead you must make time.
How, pray tell, does one ‘make’ time? Simple! Big Rocks First! Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) does a terrific visual illustration where he fills a glass bowl with sand, pebbles, and small rocks and then asks a volunteer to try to wedge in some ‘big rocks’, a metaphor for life’s most important things. With the other things already in the glass bowl, it is impossible. Covey then brings out an empty glass bowl into which the volunteer easily fits the big rocks. Covey hands her small rocks and by placing them on top and shaking the bowl, they fit in around the big rocks and the process is the same with the pebbles and the sand; I’ve even heard of a version where a glass of water is poured in as well.
Saying a firm ‘no’ to the priorities of others, to the urgent but not important is a key principle. Also, releasing perfectionism; completing the first 20% of your next biggest rock is generally far, far more productive than the last 20% of the prior rock, which is often nice but not truly vital fine-tuning anyway. Foundational to all this is the need for self-knowledge and a life plan; it’s hard to prioritize your priorities if you lack an overall strategy. Not that your mission has to be crystal clear; often all that I know is I want to move forward, onward and upward and the best I can figure out is something in a 90 degree arc direction. So, I set forth in the general direction, knowing that along the way I will find guidance and I will be much better off than if I’d sat still, waiting for perfect clarity to arrive. I suspect it would be a rather long wait!
Closing Quotes:
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” – Michael Altshuler
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” – Seneca, 4 BC – 65 AD
“Do we need more time? Or do we need to be more disciplined with the time we have?” – Kerry Johnson
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein, 1918-1990
As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier
Note: Every effort has been made to properly source any 3rd person material. I am, however, a voracious reader. If anyone finds any unattributed material, pls let me know asap and I will be delighted to give credit where credit is due.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832
